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I have followed your posts here on FR regarding Covid. I very much respect your opinion.

I will add that there are many frauds on the anti-vax side. When I see them quoted, I will not hesitate to call them out.

But here’s the thing. When Covid first reared its ugly head, I was all for the vax. Trump’s statements did much to influence me there. So I got the J&J shot. Then I noticed something. The legitimate anti-vax folks were being silenced. Public debate on the issue was forbidden. Shut up, and take the vaccination.

That’s not the way science is supposed to be conducted! It’s just like with the Climate Change issue. No debate is allowed. Silence anyone who disagrees with the official viewpoint.

I’m not some romantic poet. I’m a trained chemist. It was drummed into my head that inquiry must be respected, and continuous. That’s not happening with Climate Change. And it’s not happening with the Covid vax.

Regards to you,
LR

Within the scientific community, there can be and is much debate on various vaccine formulations. Some early vaccine candidates (in general, I am not referring to Covid) are, in fact, quite problematic. Scientists get together at meetings and discuss these issues.

I don’t talk about early vaccine development failures for a reason. That is because the vast majority of drug candidates (including vaccines) fail. In fact, we want them to fail and try to cause them to fail as early in the process as possible. Therefore, it is pointless to talk about the failures, since they make up most drug development efforts.

Once the vaccine has been tested enough for the manufacturer to submit the paperwork for approval to the FDA, there is a large volume of supporting data. Even then, there is no guarantee the FDA will accept the data.

What this means is not that there are valid antivax concerns about vaccines. Those antivaxxers who make it their livelihood to disseminate doubt and distrust of vaccines aren’t concerned about patient health or drug safety. They have completely different motives.

Climate change (since you mentioned it) is another example of a science that became politicized and is no longer based on the data. I get seriously annoyed every time I see that a disease outbreak, weather event, toxic algae bloom, frog die-offs, etc., happened because of “climate change.” In my opinion, blaming everything on “climate change” is just lazy. As long as the “cause” can be attributed to “climate change,” there is no reason to dig any further to find out what is going on.

But disease fighting and developing countermeasures is unrelated to the political forces driving the “climate change” agenda and the persons involved are not the same. In the life sciences, nothing happens without a lot of debate and discussion. And in the end, we stick to the scientific evidence.